The Shelter of Magnolias
by illecebrous
Summary: Ib finds a number in the book she loved and lost as a child. [A semi-College AU fic? Sex is now a thing. IbMary, IbGarry, IbMaryGarry.]
1. Chapter 1

_::Welcome, everyone!_

_Gosh, it's been ages since I last wrote any kind of real fanfiction. The last time I tried, I'm pretty sure I was still sporting cat ears and spouting broken Japanese. It's okay, though. Things have changed for the better. I'm wearing bunny ears now. [polite audience laughter]_

_But seriously, this is going to be a big fic. (This chapter is just about 4k words alone!) I was introduced to Ib, Mary, and Garry a few summers ago and it was like love at first sight, so like a lover I'll give them the extensive treatment they deserve and try not to put them into a canvas too small for the painting. If there are any mistakes in characterization, dialogue, etc. etc. I'd love any kind of feedback._

_As a writer, I'd prefer the story tell you about the setting, but as a little transition I'll state that this is _College/Real Life AU _for both Mary and Ib. Garry...well, he's not in college, but you'll see him later._

_That's all I have for you so far! Happy reading!_

* * *

The lakes were like bright eyes in the middle of a pallid face-iced over in the too-long winter, they seemed to be ringed with the remains of celestial mascara and too much crying. Long stretches of time, as well as the roads, wound around impossible turns. Old soft snow hardened into bumps under the bus tires, the noise like someone thudding their head against a pole every time they sped up. The middle-aged driver muttered something colorful and irritable under his fetid breath as they sped over yet another pothole.

It wasn't normally this ugly, or at least she didn't think it had been, but the season of joy had hit them hard enough to leave the city with an icy hangover and the ensuing bruises sustained by the spring were an eyesore. It was like life imitating art. The college students, returning after an extended Easter holiday, had drunken themselves into fits of miserable apathy. At least they would have the day off. Many of them had a bruise or two to show from the winter as well.

All except one, in fact. Isabel Moore-Ib-was perfectly sober and also perfectly lonely, her voice tired from the brief visit to her worried parents and phone still buzzing in her pocket as she chewed the stubs of fingernails on both hands. She shoved her wrecked fingers into said pocket after a while and shut off the unerring buzz, the device itself at nearly twenty percent of its battery and useless-and that was a shame, because it left her eyes hungry for something besides the faces of her fellow students. Looking around with distaste, she found herself surprisingly unable to feel remorse for the poor souls with vomit churning in their abused stomachs, and turned to the side of the bus and away from her peers. She would be seeing them soon, anyway. It wasn't a college town they were returning to for nothing.

She shifted, her fingers already returning to her mouth. The dusty windows were thick with the smog of wasted breath, but she used her scarf to wipe off a decent rectangle and peered through it, expecting something as stark and boring as she felt. It was only fitting. As she pressed one free hand against the glass, the city of Artas flashed its gloomy morning assets into her all-seeing gaze.

...

It was barely noon. The_ Sketchbook_ was packed with hungry and hungover students, the typical indie instrumentals on the overhead speakers, and everything ten times brighter than anything outside. Two very long legs in even longer stockings sauntered toward a metal table smacking of Parisian influence, heels clicking as she came to a stop.

This image, like so many others in the world, would be a misleading one. As a reader, one would assume this was Ib being unaccountably and inexplicably alluring as she approached an empty table. But this was not so. If one were to, say, pan up to our character's ridiculously fancy green dress and beyond, they'd find this was not the leading lady but a bright young individual with flowers climbing up her skirt-form curvy, stance perpetually defensive. This person's name was Mary Guertena, and she was the most recognized person this side of the state.

"Here's your health drink," teased Mary as she handed over a hot cup of tea to the not-so-empty table's other occupant. She sat with elbows on the table, legs crossed underneath; her smile was as subtly overzealous as always behind the veneer of whitened teeth and bright blonde hair. Over the steam, baby blue met coppery brown, and she showed no signs of interest in her newly-bought coffee as she tucked her small fists beneath a heart-shaped face. "I didn't hear a bag, but… You're still nibbling on those carrot sticks all the time, aren't you?"

"I've upgraded to celery." Ib was decidedly less alluring than the first paragraph suggested, her thick woolen socks peeking over grimy brown boots and with a sensible sweater-jeans combination above them. Nevertheless, her pale lips quirked up into a pretty smile, eyes brightening with familiarity as she straightened up in her chair. It was such a relief to be welcomed back to Artas by someone she actually knew. She gave Mary a nod of thanks, her hands going immediately to warm themselves through the thin plastic of the cup, and took a moment to appreciate the smell of sweetness that wafted from the small hole in the cap.

"Ew, don't smell it! Just drink it!" Mary's nose wrinkled in distaste as she loosened one fist to the table, raising her own cup-some mixed coffee drink, no doubt, and high in all kinds of sugar-and taking a noisy sip. "What are you, a tea afishy-aficio-someone who drinks tea all the time?"

"It's my tea, and I can smell it if I want to." She didn't need to add that this was her first cup of anything she had genuinely grown to love on campus since she got back, since that would be a waste of words. She sniffed again almost spitefully and shot Mary a challenging look.

"You're so weird," said Mary, making a face, but laughed and dropped the subject. Leaning in secretively and baring a good inch of perfect cleavage, she mock-whispered: "It's good you came home, though. It was literally torture waiting for you at that stupid bus stop! Everyone's so mean to the pretty people."

Ib shook her head, smiling ruefully now, and took the cup away from her nose before she imbibed it through the wrong face-hole. "Poor Mary."

"I know, right? It's dumb that I can't be part of the pathetic pact they have. They all thought I was stupid, I bet, when they have the brains of ants." She wiggled, feigning frustration as the fleshy curve that went into her collar did a little dance, and her lower lip puffed out as though she'd been stung there. "Not my fault I'm beautiful and successful and they're...not."

Ib sipped cautiously, not wanting to offend her by not offering support, but still disagreeing that Artas was made up of people she could write off like underlings. Mary was just out of control sometimes. And Ib _had _texted her a few hours before, telling her she had the freedom to wait at the dorm instead...

"Anyway," sighed Mary, pausing to drink. "As I was saying. This carrot stuff has gotta stop-you really should try to eat less like a rabbit, Ib! Drink milkshakes in the morning, eat candy during lectures, have steak for dinner every night! You're like a stick! A stick that someone whittled down to practically nothing!" As if on cue, her hand slipped into her dress pocket as easily as breathing and extracted a baggie filled with cookies of varying shapes and sizes: one moment her fingers had crept inside, the next, her mouth was filled with muffling crumbs. Her lips were covered in them, too. "Iff's whike...the Mwary diet. I weally wecommen' it!"

Ah, and there it was. Mary had a bad habit of generalized preaching, almost like she was filling in for the parents Ib had been glad to leave, and she had no words for that either. Suppressing the urge to retort with something sarcastic, she handed over a napkin from the little tray on her left and watched with slight disgust as Mary completely ignored the gesture in favor of wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Time to change subjects.

Her eyes, resourceful helpers that they were, flicked around the newly renovated café with more interest than she'd originally planned to try and find something new to bring up. Thankfully, she had a lot to talk about. Everything was in a subtle shade of pastel-flowers everywhere she could see, and the heated air thick with the artificial perfume of clean linen. Even the chair she sat on had been switched out from the previous ones, now more like black single-seat park benches than the comfy armchairs they'd had in winter. She had to give Mary credit for how quickly she'd changed everything around in the span of just a few weeks. "I don't know about that, but the café looks nice."

"You think so?" Mary asked, sitting up a little in obvious pride. With how quickly she was able to change subjects, Ib guessed she'd chosen to forget about the rabbit issue in order to talk more about herself-which, of course, was exactly what Ib had planned. All of this was Mary's**,** after all: she was wealthy enough to own a business that she didn't have to take care of personally. Instead, almost as if this place was her dollhouse, she had the freedom to change the surroundings with no ill repercussions and had as much pride in it as she did her actual sketchbook. "I knew you'd like the little pick-me-up when things are so bad outside! Isn't it interesting? I was trying to focus on Spring..."

"I can tell," said Ib, her smile amused at her friend's enthusiasm. "I love it."

"I know! It's-" Mary stalled. "Hey, wait a second. Are you trying to pull a subject change on me, Ib? We were just talking about you!"

Damn. Ib pretended to act shocked by this accusation, her hand going immediately to her chest. "Who, me?"

"You're so sneaky sometimes-good thing you're too cute to be mad at." Just her luck-it didn't work. Mary's face steeled with friendly resolve, and Ib could tell she was going to delve back into the topic of Ib's personal life. "So! Tell me, how was Lyndewood? How are your parents? How's your fish?"

"In order? Boring. Fine. Wet." Ib adopted a deadpan expression, her tone turning suddenly sour. Another sip of tea.

Mary pouted. "Okay, okay, I get that you hate your hometown! But are you serious about the boring thing? I'd have given _blood_ to just get out of this place, especially out of state!"

"Lyndewood isn't worth all that," said Ib dismissively, and she meant it. Although the landscaping was immaculate and it was as picturesque as a postcard, all of the events were for people that had retired into wealthy free time. Her parents were playing golf and going to wine festivals in Europe, visiting the country club, buying art-she wondered if they even knew about the idea of poverty as anything besides those African orphans they threw money at. They were still good parents, to be sure, and made certain of her own future through their financial stability; it just annoyed her that she had mountains of pink rabbits at home and an aquarium filled with disposable fish and here she learned of artists who had barely had a bed before college. (Excluding Mary, but she could buy the whole of Artas and still have enough to live off of comfortably for a few generations, so Ib assumed she was a bit of an outlier.)

"Well, we could switch places next time. After I'm freed of that stupid death ruling about my dad, you can take my place and stay, and I'll go home to your parents and be their daughter for the week."

"Sounds good."

Mary pulled back, her smile eye-catchingly bright. "I'll hold you to that! You agreed to a binding promise, Ib!"

"Yeah, yeah." With a wave of her hand, she took a long drink from her cup, emptying it with a smile. Mary was always good about coaxing those out of her. "Just tell me about what I missed."

…

The bookstore was like a translucent handkerchief in a sidewalk crack: ghostly, half-submerged, but still very visible to anyone that hadn't trodden over it. _White Rabbit. _The weathered sign that swung from its outstretched metal arm shivered in the blustery breeze and so did she, her bag held tight to her side like a protective lover. Her phone was still dead to the world in her pocket, and with good reason-she didn't want any distractions.

She'd stopped off at her dormitory-one of the bigger ones in the Chrysanthemum building, of course, since she was rooming with none other than Mary Guertena-and grabbed what she usually did when she headed to the bookstore: a thermos, her bag, and the silence it took to go into such a solemn place alone. It was her sanctuary. For her, the _White Rabbit _was a landmark of change and a place of almost holy knowledge, because it was the first bookstore she ever felt truly at home in...and the first place Artas had deigned to show her outside of campus.

For all her reverence, the place wasn't nearly as solitary as she made it out to be. It was owned by two old men who interchanged duty at the checkout desk, as owlish as they were affectionate, and college students often came to the bookstore to just get away from things. Ib would often walk in to find her peers checking out books in the fiction section, writing up new ideas by the windows, or such like-it was just that they didn't take notice of one another, or preferred ignorance to disturbance. Following tradition, she stepped past the threshold of the door with her lips shut tight, making her measured way past bookcases that creaked with the weight of so much knowledge.

The non-fiction section passed, and the fiction, and the poetry, and then she was there at the very back of the store where the smell of old paper permeated every pore of her small body. It was a slightly bittersweet scent, as she'd never had reason to enjoy it so much before, but she was happier that she could now experience it without that longing she'd had as a child. She picked up a worn book from the fiction section, punctuating her mental statement, and slowly but surely read one paragraph about the armored bears in the country of Svalbard.

She set it down again, enjoying the freedom she had to simply jump out of one book and into another, and picked up a book where Alice was jumping down the rabbit hole...and then a book about unfortunate events happening in a series...and then another, something dark, two sisters killing for fun and profit. And then another, and another, and another. They were all interesting. Tucking them under her arm, she picked up _Carrie Careless and the Galette de Rois _before she realized she'd made her way through half of one of the fiction stacks, and beneath _Carrie Careless _was an old book she hadn't seen for several years.

Almost dropping her previous stack in surprise, her shaking hands made contact with the book in question, five years' worth of anticipation straining on her face.

…

In bed, several hundred miles from Lyndewood and with Mary gone, she opened the book and became a little girl again.

It wasn't in the best condition, but it was a lovingly worn thing, and not simply damaged for the sake of damage. Emblazoned with the title _The Fabricated World _in faded white lettering on the spine, it smelled like the remnants of coffeehouses and dust from the stacks themselves. On the inside of the cover, someone had scribbled in a number: xxx-xxx-xxxx, call if lost. It had been crossed out once, twice, replaced. The most recent of them had an Artasian area code.

(She supposed it was too late to call the number if it had turned up at _White Rabbit_. And anyway, she was much too scared to lose this book again.)

Pages were turned, and past the brilliant title illustrations the first line of the story popped into view, the letters spelling out that phrase she had read so many years ago:

_In the early afternoon, under a gray sky…_

She remembered tracing these words with her tiny fingers, sounding out every word with difficulty-as a fourth grader, she still read like she was in first. The letters simply never came. If it wasn't a part of her harshly stunted vocabulary, it just turned into squiggly marks in front of her eyes, the bane of many a tutor and child psychologist and the loss of several thousand dollars from parents who only wanted to 'fix' her. Nothing worked. She was still kept behind a year. And little nine-year-old Ib, ignorant of most things but knowing she had the potential for knowledge far beyond her reach, was frustrated beyond belief at the idea that she might never learn what the other kids learned.

It was then, in the haze of negativity and words from professionals bouncing around in her mind (what, exactly, was the term _learning disability_?) that she found it.

The timing had been perfect: Lyndewood had once been a place she had been very fond of. She walked home by herself in those days, little red skirt moving freely over littler legs, and her mary-janes clicking against the concrete as she strode along the little shops of Lyndewood's main street. It was a compromise of freedom, really. She would be allowed to walk home alone if she stayed proficient in any other field of talent-mostly things that required little reading, such as amateur piano or occasional dance classes. Competent and reliable (albeit a little runty for her age), she always made sure to keep up her end of the bargain, and so the arrangement had no problems at all.

Many of the stores she'd pass would either be making their way through eventual devastation or just getting started, since the main street was not used for much besides the occasional stroll. To go downtown would mean window shopping, which the shops certainly didn't profit from, and Ib was always curious as to how they stayed open for more than a few days with such little interest. They were fun to look at, though. One month a bead shop, the next a bakery, and in the empty square of land where the yeasty smell hadn't yet gone away there was a bookstore springing up right after that.

She remembered that store best. It was the prettiest to look at because it looked so suddenly old, like a willow tree that had been planted years before any semblance of a neighborhood, and its metaphorical roots dug into the concrete behind an illegible sign. The windows bragged about novels as complex and sinister-looking as a plate of fancy duck's guts and she was always just a little afraid to look inside-until the day a splash of color reflected itself into the glass and through to her eyes.

Taught not to judge a book by its cover, she was nevertheless intrigued enough to press her nose up against the display day after day. Loud, bright, colorful-it looked like a children's book made for adults, the front covered entirely by what looked to be a bendy canvas stretched to cover the pages, and a little girl dwarfed by the colors. The painting itself was mesmerizing and Ib found herself drinking in every vaguery, picking out a flower here and a building there…

It was fate, almost. She bought it after the fifth day in a row staring at just the front cover, when the shadowy owner peeked his head out from the door and asked if she was going to loiter there all afternoon, and her pockets felt considerably lighter after using up her money on something she actually wanted.

And oh, the feeling of reading that book was indescribably precious! Even though she had to work extra-hard to get it into her head, the story was so-and the characters, and the scenery! And the pictures she didn't have to decode, they were just there, and the way the narrator was telling her everything was just like a puzzle and by the end of the book she'd actually been able to make out what they'd been saying. With the help of a dictionary and countless hours of reading and re-reading, she even learned what some of the underlying information had been missing. It had been the kickstarter for her newfound motivation for reading, her flashcards always on hand, and she'd gotten good enough by her last year of middle school to read at the normal level.

There had only been one problem.

She had never told her parents about the book-as a nine-year-old, she wasn't allowed any secrets. Her clothes were chosen for her. Her media was restricted to whatever family-friendly channels she could watch on television. Even her library was made up mostly of readers, the 1-2-3 type that had more pictures than substance. No, Ib couldn't show her parents this adult book, something that had violence in it and blood and a smattering of implied romantic things. And so this secret was shoved into her dirty laundry hamper, where no one ever went except for when she took the laundry down to the washing machines, and up until the day she was about to enter high school that was where it stayed. She treated the now-dingy book like a faithful dog that just happened to reside in her laundry hamper, and when it disappeared-

She wept, unable to do anything but accept the loss as her worried parents wrote it off hastily as anxiety. It wasn't something she could scour the house for, no matter how she tried, and the hopelessness hit her square in the chest when she woke up on one of the most important days of her life. No one really knew why she had been crying, but on the first day of high school she entered homeroom with lips trembling and eyes puffy from the strain.

Her fingers traced the first words again, biting her lower lip with a suddenly teary smile. Magic. That was what it had to be in the end. Some kind of magic wound and rewound her paths until it brought her back to the one thing that had turned her life from miserable to beautiful.

As if the universe agreed, loopy cursive in the margins said: _Curling up in bed and crying. I'm stepping back into the world I never want to leave._

[End Chapter One.]

* * *

_::And there you have it! Was it a fun enough read so far?_

_I know it's a little dry due to the exposition pieces, but that last sentence does contain a clue as to where the story is heading. Anticipate the introduction of our final tritagonist into the story next chapter!_


	2. Chapter 2

_::Hello again! _

_This chapter (just over 3k) contains warnings for dubious consent (an intoxicated partner), alcohol usage, some mentions of death, and somewhat graphic sexual content. Hence, the bumping up of rating._

_Happy reading!_

* * *

_**Pluck a flower petal by petal each day in the dark. Wait until it is beyond saving. Now, consider this: does it die from the damage, or from the loss of light?**_

A hard question. Certainly not something you'd ask a little girl, or a college girl for that matter, especially one relaxing in her rabbit pajamas in bed two days after vacation.

She remembered this excerpt; the author was fond of asking questions that no one knew how to answer. At the sheltered age of nine, Ib didn't know what death was; when the fish had breathed their last gulp of watery oxygen her parents arranged for it to have run away instead. Their emptied eyes were never allowed to see her beyond their expiration date. Those were her only brushes with death, since her grandparents had vanished shortly before she had made her tender way into the world, and she was never allowed to visit graves for fear that they would ruin her. Ladies didn't think about death. Ladies thought about bringing life into the world.

(No, she didn't know why her parents were so old-fashioned, either. She suspected it was because they were sentimentalists.)

All she had known-all she had been told about-was sleep. Shut your eyes for hours, days, weeks, months. Sometimes you might believe you'd never wake up, but you always did. You always did.

So she applied herself practically, like she was wont to do in any situation. Sleep needed darkness, which was why she never required a nightlight beyond the age of five, so it couldn't have been that. So it must have been the petals-logically, that was the right answer. But then again, if she were pinched during a dream, she would be woken up. So, what was the answer? Was it that there was some third variable? Perhaps the flower took too much cold medicine, because it was sick and that stuff made her sleepy, and in the dark they mistook the night to be a perpetual thing and so never woke up?

There had been secret research done soon afterwards, and then she had grown to learn about the absence that death caused, and the sorrow and the sickness and the guilt. She was arguably better off not knowing about the idea entirely. Nine-year-old Ib learned about many things through _The Fabricated World_, but she never imagined death would be one of them.

Nineteen-year-old Ib, however, was grateful for it.

The nudge of pillows at her back and her legs tangled in the rosy sheets reminded her that she was still grounded in the real world, even though her mind was filled with new wonder for the question: what was really the answer? Now that she knew about death, everything fragmented into separated shards of morality and ethics and reality, and it was something that she had no ability to answer even ten years later. Was it that both were the cause? (For once, she realized, she hadn't put her fingers into her mouth at all.)

The now-familiar cursive-the kind she'd been seeing fill up the margins on almost every page so far-jumped in to write with a shaky hand, _What does it matter? You put it in the dark. __You__ killed it._

That was a fair point. Why would one put a flower in the dark, anyway? Why would someone take a flower and immediately think about the ways you could torture it until its tiny body fell to pieces in your hands?

She shrugged off the shudder that passed through her, instead reading past the question and into what were dubbed the red halls. The main character (never named, but she assumed that was on purpose), had just faced the wrath of a Red Lady and a storybook that came to life in her hands, telling her things about blood and sharp knives and what would happen if you ever planned to swallow something precious. Eyes glued once again to the pages, she read slowly through the fear and panic that was coursing through the lead's mind as she walked through the red door.

Her ghost writer, as she had come to dub the writing that appeared, had written a small stream-of-consciousness treatise on how little girls should not be left in the dark. With scary books. Or angry women in paintings. She was amused at how it sounded in her head, like they were only joking around, but the increased spikiness of their loops and the illegible smears of either tears or angry rubbing out of ink made the whole piece profoundly worrisome to her. It was clear that they had had enough of the loneliness and despair that had befallen the main character. Whoever it was, they obviously loved some little girl close to home.

The writing went on for a page or so, long beyond the pain, but she was intrigued by how heartfelt the message seemed to be. Even as a nine-year-old, Ib had only been unnerved by the scene-not sad or angry. She bit her lip and stared at the words for a second, imagining some person sitting down and writing this and crying, and felt their words touch her heart. Even if she considered them a ghost, it was a misleading term: they were very, very alive, at least inside the book.

Softened by the revelation, she considered the writing-which hadn't been a nuisance, per se, but having her book marked up was a little demeaning in a way-to be more of an addition to the story. It made her feel less alone in enjoying it when there was a 'ghost' to share it with. And besides, the next part was coming up-a big part, the addition of her tall friend with the ragged coat, and she wanted to see what her ghost said about them.

_**...But wait-up ahead, is that a body on the floor? A tingle rises up her small spine, pulling her face apart with mixed parts disgust and fear, and with hesitancy she approaches it to give it a childish prod.**_

_**It makes groans like the bellows of an accordion and she yelps, jumping back, but only long enough to try calling out to it instead.**_

She wasn't disappointed. Beside these words, her ghost writer had placed a rather wacky-looking set of progressively more disgusted faces. _I'm glad you have a companion now, but you're literally killing me here. Of corpse he won't get up if you yell at him!_

The loops were back; it seemed as though the writer had set it down and then picked it back up when they were feeling better. Their off-beat type of humor was just the thing to get her back into the sheer excitement of just reading the story. Allowing herself a laugh, she turned the page and-

The door swung open, hitting the face of an abused old poster with a bang. "Ib, I'm home!"

She shut the book so fast her hands stung, spinning her head on her shoulders to find a suitable hiding place. Shit. Five already!? She forgot Mary came back early on Thursdays-and Mary was never one to allow personal moments where she wasn't allowed.

...

Despite it being a dorm room, everything was bright and happy-Mary was no interior decorator, but she did have a certain eye for color, and she made sure to cover every square inch of the room in something personal. Regulation white carpet: gone. Regulation white walls: gone. Even the ceiling had been painted in bright primaries, roses blooming over their heads, and everywhere there were piles of clothing or stuffed animals or simply discarded papers. A little makeup table (with a mirror!) was set up in one of the corners of the room and filled with more things than Ib knew how to name, and across from Mary and Ib's beds there was even a little shelf-doohickey with an entertainment system like a middle-schooler's wet dream.

There was more to the room, of course, such as the conjoined bathroom they shared with the rarely-there girls who lived beside them on the seventh floor, or the kitchenette two people could actually cook in. But this was irrelevant to much of what they actually did, which was to be college students.

Ib had no idea how Mary had even managed all of this before their first day, but it was wicked to live in-and to watch Netflix in, the comfortable scent of Mary's wildflower perfume mixing with the sugary air freshener as she clicked toward the next episode of _Mannibal _with a lapful of cheesy goldfish. Finally, the best part of her schedule: a three day weekend, every weekend. Fridays were _her _day off. (Which didn't count for much. In general ed, there was an unusually large amount of time to spend on her own, and most of her classes were boring at best. Hence the nailbiting, and the crunchy snacks, and...)

"I don't know why you just won't come out with me," simpered the aforementioned blonde girl, mascara brush obediently following her hand up inch-long falsies as her wide eyes stared into the mirror. Mary was famous for wearing makeup for the most dramatic effect possible. She twisted her body back to frown at Ib, the makeup counter seat squeaking. "It's not like you don't have a fake ID. And besides, you came to college to have fun, right?"

She only shrugged in response, taking the scrunchie from her wrist and gathering long brown hair in a messy bun. Ib didn't much care for partying; not because she believed she was better than anyone who did, but mostly because she got headaches from the noise. "I don't want a hangover over the weekend. Big test on Monday."

A snort. Heavily lined eyes flicked toward the screen, where Mannibal was preparing his latest kill. "Ha. I doubt there's any test that involves eating people, but you can do whatever." Mary turned back to the mirror, her loose black top rustling with stars, and applied so much glittery smokiness around her pale eyes Ib thought she was about to start a fire. "Anyway, what do you plan to do after you've watched everything? I know for a fact you didn't get any homework you haven't already done."

"Maybe I'll join you at the club." There was no way she was going anywhere in her baggy college sweater and flannels, but the sarcasm was probably weaker than she'd intended, because:

"You will?" Sudden hope blared through Mary's tone like a siren, and Ib flinched. "I have an extra dress! We can go meet people! I can make you up in like ten minutes, if you really want to come, I mean they have a bathroom and-"

Ib immediately felt bad for even bringing it up, and awkwardly made a hand motion in Mary's direction. She was looking at her again. "I...I was kidding."

It was like slowly letting the air out of a balloon-you could almost hear the joy fall out of her expression. Defeatedly, Mary returned to her makeup and applied red gloss over lips that puckered under the wand, and Ib tried not to look at her too much as she rose to grab her purse. She could already feel her fingers flexing toward her lips again.

"Well, I'll be back at like...two or three, maybe? Leave the door open?" There was a trace of flatness in her tone, something that made Ib wince and nod. "Perf. See ya later."

And then the door opened and shut, and Mannibal cleared the plates from his table of death right before she cursed herself for being so blunt. Another goldfish's life was taken between her frustrated teeth as she resisted the urge to bite off a nail entirely. It was like she'd kicked a puppy right in the nose.

…

Mary's departure usually made the room feel more empty than it was, and after a few hours of artful killing Ib was being smothered by the quiet. Despite her overall bookish appearance, and the fact that she liked solitude once in a while, she also loved the warmth that Mary seemed to have radiating around her like a corona of sunlight. It just wasn't a dorm room without her roommate there to share it with. Besides, Mary loved _Mannibal _too-she thought his murders were almost sensually beautiful, no matter how creepy Ib thought that was.

She sighed, finally giving up her place on the couch (and her goldfish) in favor of the book again, and cracked it open to the last page she'd left off on (somewhere around the death puns). One page flipped by, then another, and the cool fingers of the tall man were wrapping around hers as she grabbed the key from his hand. She needed to find his rose. It was blue, and it was losing petals in the other hallway-her ghost urging on the little girl, and Ib, towards a solution that would lead to saving her new friend.

The door opened again, but surprisingly less loudly than it had the night before: the clock beside her read _2:17 AM _and she realized she'd successfully spent four hours alone. In tumbled Mary.

"Ib! Ib, Isabel, thank _GOD_," she cried with a smile cut across her face, and she slammed the door behind her like there was someone chasing after. Every word in her mouth was mushed up with the rest. "That club was so…! And the music, I just, I was..."

"Mary, calm down," said Ib, closing her book slightly less quickly once she realized Mary was intoxicated. It wouldn't matter if she found it now. Amused, she patted the sheets beside her blanket backrest and helped Mary sit down. "You sound like you had a good time."

"I did!" She'd gone a little shrilly, like the alcohol plugged her ears, and when she leaned in for a tight hug Ib could smell the sour apple shots on her breath. When she pulled back, her eyes were ever-so-slightly unfocused-but manically bright, the pupils burning. "I did, but I just… I wanted you to come, Ib! I wanted you to come so bad! You would have loved everything!" A laugh.

And then her happy facade shattered, the pieces bouncing under the bed somewhere, and she crumpled into Ib's body.

"Whoa, shh, come here." The book, shoved aside. Her ghost could wait.

From the embrace of Ib's now-thoroughly-ruined sweatshirt, Mary pulled her wet face up to glance guiltily into Ib's concerned eyes. "I wanted to-" sniff. "-to dance with you. That's all I wanted! I wanted to turn down all those boys and girls who asked me to keep them company, because they only wanted me for what I was acting like, and now to come home and have you holding me..."

For some reason, those words brought a flush to her cheeks she couldn't explain. She never could, actually, since this wasn't the first time Mary had aired sentiments when drunk. "I..."

"I want to tell you how happy you make me...I'm always by myself, but you make me feel like I'm in a whole crowd of people..." A noise came from Mary that was half laugh, half whimper. "I'm sorry I make you feel so bad when I'm sober."

Gulp. Okay, this was the dangerous part. She shook her head, murmuring something about how that wasn't true, but Mary was insistently pushing into her front and shaking her head right back.

"I want to make you feel good. I want to make you feel like..." A heavy breath, swelling up like rainwater on a windowpane. Distantly, pale hands slid up a smooth lower back, and Ib bit back a groan. "I want to give you what you give me, all the time!"

Oh, God. She had to defuse the bomb _now_. She had to step her way through the minefield, that's what she had to do, but Mary's eyes were like two deep-water wells and she couldn't help staring to find the bottom. Her lips parted to say something but the words wouldn't come.

"Ib, I love you..." Mary's long, long falsies framed her needy gaze, slightly crooked from the rubbing she'd been doing, and Ib half-choked when she realized Mary's clumsy fingers had crept their way underneath and up to her bra strap. "You love me too, right? You love me?" Raggedly, like the echoes of sobbing.

Her mouth was all out of spit now. Ib's hands shakily moved to grab Mary's arms, and she took a deep breath to make up for the gallon of saliva in her stomach. "M...Mary, I think you should sleep. You must've had a lot to drink."

"I'm not tired." A steely hardness had formed in her voice, and her moist eyes evaporated under the heat of her look. Her hands continued fiddling with the metal hooks despite Ib's increasingly weakening hold. "You love me, right? That must be why...why you always pretend to push me away..."

Her arousal was contagious. It was contagious, that was what it was, but Ib's chest was beating so loud and everything was turning different shades of rosy warm that she could tell wasn't just from sex. Ib shuddered as the strap separated, Mary's mouth suddenly at her throat. Mary was crawling on top of her.

"Mary, you-I mean, I'm not-" Dry, dry tongue. "I just want to be frie-"

"You're the worst liar I ever saw. Give up already," whispered Mary, and Ib's hands pulled back to dig with stubby fingernails into her roommate's tense back.

The rest of it-the clothes stripped away from rosy shoulders and smooth legs, the kisses dropped on chapped lips, makeup exchanged from face to neck and shoulder and then the round swell of breasts-passed like a blur in front of Ib's lidded eyes. The pleasure, yes, waves of it coming from the sunny mouth of a beautiful girl and her fingers diving low and then _inside_-the smell of wildflowers everywhere on her, Mary's mark of possession.

"You're...killing me…!" Ib gasped, her eyes squeezing so tightly together and her thighs clamping round one enthusiastic hand, and breathlessly Mary captured her mouth again and again to swallow her sounds. An ouroboros. They snaked together for forever, rediscovering what it felt like to touch someone.

When they were done, sticky sweat and the remnants of the cherry gloss pooling in the creases of their bodies, Mary held her hand. They lay there in the remains of their sex and stared up at the roses blooming, and Ib swore alcohol was a communicable disease. She was drunk. She was out of her mind. She was just unhinged enough to listen when Mary told her she was the most perfect person in all of the universe.

…

Cut to: a mysterious silhouette in the windows of a flower shop. Hands watering the plants, admiring each soft petal with fingertips yellowed from years of wasted cigarettes, a gentle smile on glossy thin lips. The solitude of a brightly lit florist's only a few miles from the bed where wasted Ib lay.

Garry, as he liked to be called, adjusted his skirt out of the way of the water and clicked the sprayhead to _off_.

[End Chapter Two.]

* * *

_::What? I promised Garry in this chapter? Well, look at that, there he is._

_But seriously, since most of this is from a third-person narrative in Ib's perspective, you won't be seeing too much of him until Ib actually makes contact. For now, he's just a humble little [mumbles] with a job at [mumbles]. Here's something I'll state point-blank, though: he's not cross-dressing. His gender identity is about as mysterious as the rest of him at the moment!_

_Here's to another chapter completed! Anticipate the next one!_


End file.
